The following is an abstract from the "325th Anniversary, A History of the Town of Hempstead, 1644‑1969, pages 35 and 36

 "The Loyalists in Hempstead and other Tory strongholds are now subject to bitter and unremitting persecution for the duration of the war‑‑seven torturous years.  Peace will find them exhausted, impoverished, outcasts in the very towns their families before them had hacked out of the forests.  American forces are instructed to round up all fire‑arms held by the Tories in advance of anticipated attacks on Long Island by the Continental forces.  The Town desperately needs a hero, and finds it in Captain Richard Hewlett, veteran of the French wars, stalwart Tory from a family of confirmed Tories.

His escapades would be enchanting if the times were less anguished.  The ubiquitous captain darts in and out of townspot between raids, hides in barns and Pine Barrens, turns up again and again, with the redcoats on his heels, now to wrangle men and munitions, now to stock‑pile supplies in his home, now to head a counter‑attack.

 Brought to heel by Colonel Heard and his Minute Men, Hempstead's men turn in their arms, submit to seizure and begin to assume the posture of the defeated.  Sixteen are imprisoned, and four hundred and sixty‑two of 788 sign a pledge of total submission.  Not the dashing Captain Hewlett.  Along with a small band of fellow Tories, he escapes.  Among them is one Daniel Whitehead Kissam ‑‑ Justice Kissam ‑‑ along with his son Daniel Jr. and his brother Benjamin.  In the spring of 1776, Long Island's militia has enrolled 2000 men from Suffolk, 1700 from Queens, and 580 from Kings County.  Patriot or Loyalist, farmer, fisherman or tradesman, if he can lift a musket, he's in.  And yet the swamps, woods and coves abound with evaders and deserters with whom the Continental army plays frustrating hide‑and‑seek.

 The day after the Liberty Bell proclaims America's crusade for independence, General Howe arrives with some 25,000 men and digs in on Staten Island.  The Loyalists in Hempstead and elsewhere expect succor.  But American strategy cuts off the island and institutes the harshest measures of the war to disarm the Tory sympathizers and to apprehend as many as possible, particularly the leaders‑‑ men whose family names are as much a part of the town as its salt marshes and mud flats.  Dr. Martin, the Hewletts, Daniel Kissam, Charles Hicks and the others are now hounded like dogs through swamp and field.  Greatest prize of all is the mercurial Captain Hewlett, cornered finally, and taken.  He, along with the others, are shipped to Connecticut to be held there indefinitely.

 Meanwhile, British forces are building.  New York harbor fills with British frigates.  On August 22, 400 ships flanked by 37 men‑of‑war sail from England toward Long Island.  The British attack from the rear, cutting the colonial lines, A thousand Americans die in the battle of Brooklyn Heights.  The Redcoats win the day, but Washington and what remains of his forces manages to slip across the river under the cover of darkness‑‑by ferry, fishing boats, and a pitiful odd‑lot assortment of borrowed craft.  Queens County is again returned to the British.  But the coming years of occupation will bring bitter hardship, instead of relief.  The imperishable Captain Hewlett is eventually freed, returns, receives a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and commands a British battalion.

The color and shape of the war is everywhere; looting, desecration of property, sickness, hunger, loss of livestock, neglect of home and crops, roving marauders, "privateers" plundering Long Island's coastline, thieving whaleboats, confiscation of land, business and personal belongings is commonplace, and everywhere‑‑in home and street and tavern the harsh intrusion of the 16th and 17th Regiment of Light Dragoons.

The war's aftermath brings severe reprisals upon the Tories and the suffering is particularly intense in Hempstead.  The townspeople endure loss of all civil rights.  They are barred from holding public office, totally disfranchised.  Their lands are forfeited.  They have neither the wherewithal nor the right to continue their businesses and professions.  Many have a death sentence hanging over their heads.  About one third of Queens County, according to one chronicler, is forced to leave at the end of the war. ("Colonial Hempstead," Bernice Schultz.) Branches of fine old families, the Seamans, the Pearsalls, the Smiths and others, depart for Canada, to escape the reprisals of the embittered victors.  Some Tory refugees go to England and the West Indies.  Daniel Kissam and Richard Hewlett go to Nova Scotia. (Hewlett's wife eventually returns to Hempstead to live out her years.)  In the Spring of 1783, 3000 residents of Queens County leave for New Brunswick ("Long Island's Story", Jacqueline Overton).

Prior to the end of the Revolutionary War, hundreds of Whigs had already left for Connecticut, leaving their Long Island properties to deteriorate or to be destroyed during the long British occupation.  By the end of the war, there is nothing left to return to.  One Long Island historian, Daniel M. Tredwell ("Personal Reminiscences of Men and Things on Long Island") writes: "Immediately on the Declaration of Independence many loyalists left for the colonies, some going to Canada and others returning to England.  Early in 1782 bands of   loyalists had begun to leave New York and Long Island for the adjoining provinces of Canada.  But the migrations which most sensibly affected Long Island (Town of Hempstead) were those of 1783.  At this latter period about three thousand emigrants, mostly from Long Island landed at the mouth of the St. John River, New Brunswick, and founded the City of St. John.  Another fleet arrived a few months after with two thousand exiles who sailed directly from Huntington, Long Island, to New Brunswick.  On founding the City of St. John, New Brunswick, the territory of which was a wilderness before the landing of the loyalists, Colonel Gabriel Ludlow, of Hempstead, was elected the first Mayor of the City and remained so until his resignation in 1795.

"We visited this city in 1892.  It still bears many sacred memories of its early history.  Its graveyard is one of the most interesting revolutionary relics on this continent.  It is in the very heart of the city, and is about five acres in extent, and is the resting place of many thousands, some of whom were men of great prominence in their day in the Old Colonies.  The City of St. John was the distributing centre of the early population, not only of New Brunswick, but throughout the entire Canadian border, where we find distributed some of the best blood of   Massachusetts, Connecticut, Long Island, New York and the Eastern States.  We trace the names Seaman, Hicks, Denton, Hewlett, Carman, Dorland, Tredwell, Platt, Hendrickson and others scattered over Prince Edward Island, Halifax, Annapolis Royal and many other points, all of whose ancestors were presumably exiles from the States.

"We of Long Island never knew the destination of our exiled families.  There are families by the name of Treadwell now (1888) living in New Brunswick, about twelve miles above Frederickton, who have a tradition that their ancestors came from Long Island.  The place where they landed on the St. John's River is still known as Tredwell's Landing.  "We found Tredwells in Ottawa with a similar tradition.  At Pembroke, one hundred and fifty miles northwest from Ottawa on the Ottawa River, was found a considerable family of Tredwells who claim a like descent."